We all know how important it is to deliver new homes – but as your Member of Parliament I want to make sure that we do so while protecting the greenbelt and the character of villages like Pirton.
Over the past year I have been thinking about this particular challenge a lot. My research shows that we could unleash hundreds of thousands of homes by building on just a small portion of state-owned land. This development could be in the form of new garden cities and villages – built with all the right infrastructure, in a way that is sympathetic to surrounding communities and the environment.
Crucially, building like this would enable us to deliver a lot more social and affordable housing. Genuinely creating homes for young families who desperately need to get onto the housing ladder; not the large, unaffordable executive houses so often added unsympathetically onto the edge of otherwise characterful villages.
Building new garden cities would take the pressure off of villages like Pirton to deliver new homes, allowing them to continue to evolve organically. And certainly, the Government understands the importance of that. That’s why it is abolishing top-down housing targets, allowing local Councils to decide future housing numbers based on the needs of their area.
It is also why the Government is pushing for much more targeted development, with a brownfield first regeneration policy focussed on delivering huge new housing projects in places like London, Leeds and Barrow, and an enormous new quarter proposed for Cambridge, which will bring massive economic benefits for our region.
Again and again, residents in Pirton tell me that we need to protect the historic character of our village from unchecked development. I completely agree. That’s why in addition to everything mentioned already, I am campaigning to extend the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty so that it covers Pirton – providing vital, lasting protections for the character of the village.
